Role of Technological Gatekeepers in the Growth of Industrial Clusters: Evidence from Chile

Abstract

Giuliani E. Role of technological gatekeepers in the growth of industrial clusters: evidence from Chile, Regional Studies. Industrial clusters are often associated with innovative success. However, there is very little research on what types of organizational models apply to clusters as they grow. This paper uses longitudinal micro-level data for a wine cluster in Chile. It shows that the most advanced firms in the cluster behave as technological gatekeepers – that is, they acquire knowledge outside cluster boundaries and contribute to diffusing knowledge to other local firms – and do so persistently over time. The results are explained by combining three theoretical perspectives: evolutionary economics theory; business studies on communities of practice and knowledge workers' know-how trade; and embeddedness theory.

Giuliani E. 技术守门者在产业集群增长过程中的作用：来自智利的相关证据，区域研究。产业集群常常与创新成功相联系。然而，鲜有研究着重于分析组织模型在集群增长中的应用。本文利用纵向微观数据对智利的白酒产业集群进行了分析。研究表明，产业集群中最高等级的公司扮演着技术门卫的作用，即上述公司持续地在产业领域之外对所需相关知识进行了定义，同时也为知识向地方公司进行传播做出贡献。通过整合分析三个理论观点本研究对结果进行了解释：演进经济理论、针对实践型及知识型工人的“如何进行贸易”社团的商业研究，以及嵌入理论。

产业集群 技术守门者 知识网络 白酒产业 智利

Giuliani E. Le rôle des gardiens technologiques dans le développement des clusters industriels: des preuves provenant du Chili, Regional Studies. Les clusters industriels se rapportent souvent au succès de l'innovation. Cependant, rares sont les recherches sur les modèles organisationnels qui s'appliquent aux clusters au fur et à mesure de leur développement. Cet article emploie des données microéconomiques longitudinales relatives à un cluster vinicole situé au Chili. On montre que les entreprises les plus avancées du cluster se comportent en gardiens technologiques – autrement dit, elles acquièrent des connaissances au-delà des frontières du cluster et contribuent à la diffusion des connaissances à d'autres entreprises locales – ce qui continue dans le temps. On explique les résultats à partir d'une conjonction de trois facteurs théoriques; à savoir, la théorie de l'économie évolutionnaire; des études commerciales des communautés de pratique et du savoir-faire des travailleurs de la connaissance; et la théorie de l'intégration.

Clusters industriels Gardiens technologiques Réseaux de connaissances Industrie vinicole Chili

Giuliani E. Die Rolle von technologischen Gatekeepern für das Wachstum von Branchenclustern: Belege aus Chile, Regional Studies. Branchencluster werden oft mit innovativem Erfolg in Verbindung gebracht. Allerdings wurde bisher nur sehr wenig erforscht, welche Arten von Organisationsmodellen für im Wachstum befindliche Cluster gelten. In diesem Beitrag werden longitudinale Daten auf Mikroebene für einen Weinbau-Cluster in Chile genutzt. Es wird gezeigt, dass die fortgeschrittensten Firmen des Clusters als technologische Gatekeeper wirken: Sie verschaffen sich außerhalb der Clustergrenzen Wissen und tragen zur Weitergabe von Wissen an andere Firmen vor Ort bei – und zwar konsequent über längere Zeit hinweg. Die Ergebnisse werden durch eine Kombination aus drei theoretischen Perspektiven erklärt: evolutionäre Wirtschaftstheorie, eine betriebswirtschaftliche Untersuchung über Praxisgemeinschaften und den Wissenshandel durch Kopfarbeiter sowie die Theorie der Eingebettetheit.

Branchencluster Technologische Gatekeeper Wissensnetzwerke Weinindustrie Chile

Giuliani E. Papel de los guardianes tecnológicos en el crecimiento de las aglomeraciones industriales: el ejemplo de Chile, Regional Studies. Las aglomeraciones industriales se asocian con frecuencia con innovaciones fructíferas. Sin embargo, existen muy pocos estudios sobre qué tipos de modelos organizativos se aplican en las aglomeraciones en crecimiento. En este artículo utilizamos datos longitudinales a nivel micro para una aglomeración vinícola en Chile. Demostramos que las empresas más avanzadas en la aglomeración se comportan como guardianes tecnológicos: adquieren conocimientos fuera de los límites de la aglomeración y contribuyen a difundir el conocimiento a otras empresas locales, y funcionan así continuamente con el paso del tiempo. Explicamos los resultados combinando tres perspectivas teóricas: la teoría de la economía evolucionaria, los estudios comerciales sobre las comunidades de práctica y el comercio del conocimiento de trabajadores intelectuales así como la teoría de integración.

Aglomeraciones industriales Guardianes tecnológicos Redes de conocimiento Industria vinícola Chile

Keywords:

• Industrial clusters
• Technological gatekeepers
• Knowledge networks
• Wine industry
• Chile

JEL classifications:

• O16
• O18
• O33

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Cristian Diaz Bravo, Marcelo Lorca Navarro, Cristian Goich and the other agronomists/enologists from Valle de Colchagua; and Mario Castillo and colleagues at CORFO. Thanks are also extended to Kumiko Miyazaki (NickFest, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, 2010); Gerald McDermott (LAEMOS, Buenos Aires, 2010) and Carlo Pietrobelli (AIB, Rio de Janeiro, 2010) for comments on earlier versions of this paper; and to Gabriela Cares, Roberta Rabellotti and Graciela Moguillansky, and three anonymous reviewers for improving the paper. Funding provided by the European Union Marie Curie Fellowship Program (HPMT-GH-00-00158-01), the UK Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) (PTA-030200201739 and PTA-026270644) and the Progetto Alfieri – Fondazione CRT (Italy) are gratefully acknowledged. Last but not least, the author is grateful to Alice Baldacci for her time.

Notes

In Allen's work the focus of analysis is professionals within organizations; this paper uses firms as the unit of analysis.

By ‘cognitive role’ is meant the position of firms in interfacing extra-cluster and local knowledge.

This term is from Allen (1977) and describes individuals within organizations with strong links to external sources of knowledge and weak links to the internal knowledge system.

The term ‘capabilities’ is used somewhat loosely here to indicate the technological capabilities of firms that depend on their internal skills and knowledge-generating activities.

The term ‘knowledge workers’ is from Drucker (1977, 1993); Richard Florida defines knowledge workers as the creative class, that is ‘professionals whose primary responsibilities include innovating, designing and problem solving’ (Florida and Goodnight, 2005, p. 125).

Most industry accounts suggest that moving up the quality ladder through product and process innovation is critical for success in this industry. However, opposite views exist that suggest that successful strategies can also be pursued through the production and export of large quantities of cheap and low-quality wine, which require more supply-chain management skills than product and process innovations (for example, Ponte and Ewert, 2009).

The evolution and success of the wine industry in Chile has been underpinned by several policy initiatives aimed at funding research and innovation at firm and university levels. For instance, a new generation of agronomists and enologists has been nurtured and trained in local public (and private) universities.

Chile currently has fourteen different wine areas (see http://www.survino.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/mapa_zonas_vitivinicolas_chile_2008.jpg).

References to videos are not included in this paper. Details are available from the author upon request.

The author thanks an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

The available data indicate that, within the cluster, the number of hectares of vines planted for wine production has almost tripled from 1997 to 2002 (see http://www.sag.gob.cl).

CORFO is the Corporacion de Fomento, a Chilean government institution that promotes industrial development.

For example, the number of times Colchagua's wines have been cited annually by Wine Spectator increased tenfold between 1994 and 2002.

The 2006 questionnaire included some slight modifications which did not affect the key variables used in this paper.

The entry and exit of six firms does not mean that the exiting firms were taken over by the new entrants. It is coincidental that over the period studied there was perfect turnover, which did not change the overall population of the firms in the cluster, resulting in thirty-two firms in operation in both periods observed.

The focus on technological knowledge is due to its importance for producing high-quality wines, a key requirement for competition in high-end international markets (see the third section).

In a very few cases responses did not match (for example, if firm i did not indicate firm j as a source of knowledge, when j claimed it transferred knowledge to firm i). This paper considers the flow of knowledge to take place if either i or j claims a knowledge link, which minimizes the risk of missing data due to poor recall. Previous research analysed data coding non-matching responses as non-existent ties: this affected neither the structure of the knowledge network nor the positions of the actors in the network in any significant way.

The classification of firms according to cognitive position is based on the acknowledgement that firms play different, sometimes asymmetric, roles within the cluster knowledge network: while some firms exchange knowledge on a mutual basis (that is, mutual exchangers), there are other cases where knowledge linkages are not reciprocal, so that some firms behave as net sources of knowledge and therefore may transfer more knowledge than they receive from other local firms; other firms may display an absorption-centred learning pattern within the cluster, that is, they absorb more knowledge than they release, acting as net absorbers of knowledge. In yet other cases, firms are isolated within the cluster knowledge network, that is, they neither receive nor transfer knowledge to other cluster firms.

Although data were collected through a structured questionnaire, face-to-face interviews in all cases offer significant opportunities for discussion about the nature and history of the firm and its learning behaviours.

The remaining firms in the cluster play other cognitive roles, depending on their external openness and positions in the local knowledge networks. These roles are marginal in terms of both the number of firms involved and the contributions they make to cluster learning and innovation processes. For these reasons they were not the focus of this paper. For more information, see Appendix A, ‘Cognitive roles in the cluster’.

Foreign firms are not necessarily subsidiaries of multinational corporations; they may be the result of a private foreign investor with no other investments in the wine industry elsewhere.

In 2006 the differences could not be tested due to the limited number of observations in the ES group.

Data on geographical distance between firms in the cluster are available from the author upon request. They are not shown here, but firms in TG social neighbourhoods are not necessarily more geographically proximate within the cluster.

The innovative push of this cluster is driven not by the presence of global buyers, which instead are considered to be a key extra-cluster source of learning in many clusters in developing countries (Schmitz, 2004). In general, the wine industry is not a context where global buyers play a dominant role in firms' upgrading processes, at least in the period in which this and earlier studies by the author took place, as reflected also in Giuliani et al. (2010).

The author thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.